The Curse of Kalathan

Four: Searching

There wasn't much light in the archives; the old man who took care of the scrolls said the light damaged the old documents. Theo had to strain his eyes to read in the light of the dim lamp, but he was excited to have found this, excited as always to be putting together pieces in the puzzle of Kalathan's history. He had never been satisfied with the stories his tutors had told them, with the books they had read about how their nation had come to be.

It had all sounded a little contrived to Theo, a little too good to be true. The friendly blonde giants from the west had ridden over the mountains into Kalathan, offering unity and security, and the grateful people had welcomed them, submitting passively to their rule and their religion. Since then the blood and the language of the conquerors and the conquered had mingled so extensively that no one, not even the kings, could be very sure whose side they should take if it were ever necessary. It made sense, he supposed, to imagine it to be a happy event – that the army had brought their swords along just for show, that the local people willingly shared their land, their food, their homes and their wealth with their invaders. It was simpler to believe that the two peoples shared their culture in some kind of collaboration, and that it was friendship and co-operation, not coercion and violence that had led to the syncretism of cultures, the mix of west and east, of fair and dark, that was Kalathan.

But Theo had never liked assumptions. Simplicity was all very well but it wasn't truth, and Theo loved, had always thirsted to know the truth of things. His mother still teased him, telling stories about his constant questions as a child, how he had begun reading when he was five and had never stopped, how he had begged to stay in the schoolroom when Jandrin and Jameth had begged just as earnestly to be allowed to leave.

Since he had finished with tutors and was the master of his own time, he had spent many spare hours in dim rooms like this one, trawling through old documents. He had found histories written on cracked, dry parchments, the forgotten translations of orders and decrees, military records, letters and old laws. He had filled piles of notebooks, and often at night he would lie awake, feeling as if he was slowly learning to know his country as it had been, as it had grown and become what it was today. But it was the faith of Kalathan, especially, that had fascinated him recently. In the past months he had learnt things that he doubted anyone else living knew about the history of the temple and the scriptures, things that made him glad his father seldom asked him about his hobby, as everyone called it. Theo was piecing together bits of the past, and if Father were to ask him about it he might have to admit it: he was beginning to doubt.

This one he found the other day was gold – a letter from the same year as the conquest of Kalathan, the ink still readable and the parchment only barely crumbling. It was from a general of one of the armies of Albrin the Conqueror himself, a letter to someone that Theo, after all his research, recognised to be one of Albrin's advisors. Theo made his way slowly through the letter, copying each word into his notebook as he translated from the Old Tongue into modern Kalath. At first it read much as he had expected, greetings and some other military details, until a few paragraphs in when he stopped, put down his pen and read on without writing it down. The general had been sent with his army to the lands to the north, to inform the local people of their new status as subjects of the new king of Kalathan. Theo's brow furrowed as he read, as he pictured the soldiers scaring the locals with their weapons and armour, taking inventories of the wealth of each village, of the number of fighting men. He had been told, this general, to pay close attention to the religion of the people. Albrin wanted to know who they worshipped. He wanted to know about the gods they served and feared, and the general wrote back faithfully, describing rituals and shrines and practices in detail.

Theo reached the end of the scroll and sat back. Albrin, he had been taught, had brought the true religion of the temple with him from the west, from where he and his followers had broken away from the Empire that had taken over most of the Outlands. They had made their way over the mountains to this land, where they had been met by the scattered Kalath tribes, who had found in Albrin and his army the leadership they had lacked. Albrin's army had brought unity and peace to Kalathan, and they had built the first temple, the stone foundations of which still lay under the walls of the current temple in the city. The Western Empire, he had learnt as a boy, did not serve the true God, the God of power and victory, the creator of the universe, the God who had chosen Kalathan as his own special land. The Outlanders worshipped a weak God who had walked on earth as a man and even died, hung on a stake like a criminal. Theo had never understood this and had grown up believing all Outlanders to be ridiculously stupid. How absurd to worship a weak God who took the form of a man! In Kalathan they held up and revered the sword, and they forged ahead in strength with the blessings of the Spirits of Victory and Plenty.